


Truth Like Ice, Like Fire

by trulily



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Angst, Co-parenting Pod, Eventual Sweentess, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, Lil bit of love triangle, Minor Character(s), Oathkeepers Secret Santa, POV Brienne, Post-Lady Stoneheart, When is Podrick ever not being parented
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-24 16:00:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21860578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trulily/pseuds/trulily
Summary: Going to kneel before Podrick, she felt his forehead with her palm. The whole of her hand fit over the boy’s brow with room still for her fingers to follow around the curve of his head. So small, she thought. Pain lanced through her as real as any sword. If his fever did not break soon, she knew her squire would not live to the end of the week.She looked up into the canopy of trees. Beyond them, the sky was darkening. A weak trail of smoke drifted up from their fire and disappeared beyond the silvery boughs.Once, she had thought honor a simple thing, as simple as truth. But those were just words. Real living was choosing, was harder. Ser Jaime had tried to tell her that, perhaps.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 20
Kudos: 114
Collections: Oathkeepers Secret Santa 2019





	Truth Like Ice, Like Fire

**Author's Note:**

> This is a secret santa gift for the one and only elloise! happy holidays love, I hope you enjoy <33
> 
> Special thanks to janie_tangerine for inspiring the title, which is taken from Bob Dylan's "Love Minus Zero/No Limit" -- a great song, a true JB song, and a solid compass for this short little story. And thanks as well to aliveanddrunkonsunlight for doing an early read-through of this fic for me! thank you drunks!!  
> 

Hyle crouched by the fire, adjusting a rabbit over the flames. It was a lean catch and not likely to fill their stomachs, but they were lucky to have meat and fire, however meager. A light rain was falling; it hissed softly where it spattered onto the coals.

“He’ll come back,” Hunt said into the flames.

Brienne broke her stare from the bare boughs of the elms and soldier pines that were swaying in the mist. Jaime had left that way some hours before, striding off on foot through the trees until darkness and distance swallowed him. She could still imagine the movement of the branch that had swung angrily as he pushed it aside.

She wrapped her arms around herself. Her cheek was sore, its scab itching and the muscle beneath it aching as the gnarled and hopeless tissue set. And though a full day had passed since the trial in the wood that had seen the ghost of Lady Catelyn slain, Brienne’s limbs felt hollow with fatigue, and her ears still rang with the din of metal and the sound of men dying. The wet of the air sank through her, chilled her to the bone. Nothing warmed her.

“Why should he?” she heard herself say, her voice low. “I betrayed him.” ~~~~

Hyle looked up through his dirty shag of brown hair and met her regard. The small blaze before him made shadows jump and dance across his face. Not an honest face, she once had thought. Now though he stared at her with an open, frank sort of look, perhaps considering what she had said, and he did not protest, did not deny her wrongdoing. _Perhaps he is honest. Only a different kind._

After a moment he shrugged his shoulders. “Betrayed or no, the Kingslayer isn’t dead, is he? So what’s he to mourn?”

“His name is Ser Jaime,” she corrected.

Hunt ignored that. With a bit of stick he had been using to prod the fire, he gestured to where Podrick lay sleeping beneath her cloak.

“Your betrayal saved me and the boy from hanging, that’s two lives spared.” An edge crept into his voice. “Or don’t they count?”

Brienne sucked a breath in between her teeth. _I spared all our lives, true, but at what cost?_

In the time it took her to find Jaime at Pennytree, Podrick and Hyle had been wasting away all the while in the stinking cavern the Brotherhood made their dungeon. Untended to and poorly nourished, the boy had fallen ill with fever, and had not recovered still.

When Brienne returned with Jaime to the Brotherhood’s hiding place, Stoneheart demanded a trial. But to call it such would be a falsehood; It was no trial, and Brienne was no champion. _To the death,_ the grey woman had croaked, her fingers pressed to the gash at her throat, _Since you failed me in life._

She understood she was meant to kill Jaime. If she did, the tall, bearded one called Harwin had promised that Podrick and Hyle would be freed. But even if she followed Stoneheart’s bidding, she did not trust these men to let them leave. She did not trust the lady she once swore herself to. She trusted no one, no one at all. No one but Jaime, who had followed without question into her trap. Jaime, whose hand they had tied to his sword with coarse rope, for he had tried to cast it down rather than fight her. Jaime, who stared at her with eyes that accused.

But when their captors pushed them into the clearing to fight, Brienne had turned away from Jaime, her blade cutting instead through the belly of the one-eyed man who had called her the Kingslayer’s whore, and he fell away clutching his entrails as he died.

There was a flash of steel, and she raised Oathkeeper in time to bite back against another man’s blade and slip past it into his shoulder. As he stumbled, she pumped her sword arm back and stabbed him again.

Brienne whirled on her heel, panting, heart pounding. Jaime had since taken her lead and was engaged with another of the men who was struggling to keep his arm up. Her eyes landed on the one in the yellow cloak called Lem, who she once had mistaken for the Hound. His sword was drawn, but Brienne was quicker. She drove her elbow up into his jaw, and crying out with effort she brought her blade crashing into him. He sank away and died with a gurgle.

She pulled her sword free, and as she did she looked up into the terrible face of the grey lady. Her eyes burned with hate. Brienne’s stomach turned. _Hate, yes. This is what hate has wrought._ She advanced a step toward her.

“Stop,” shouted a man’s voice. “No closer.”

Brienne froze, swinging her head round to see him. Harwin gripped Podrick in his arms. He tipped his dagger against the boy’s neck, and a fine bead of blood rolled down his pallid skin.

“Drop your swords, or the boy dies,” Harwin warned.

Brienne looked around herself. The young smith called Gendry held Hyle even as the hedge knight twisted and pulled at his restraints. Jaime stood over a man he had been fighting, his sword poised at his throat.

“Let them go,” she breathed, her stare sliding back to Podrick. The boy’s eyes were wide with fear. “It’s not them you want.”

At Lady Stoneheart’s side, Thoros the Myrish priest bent to whisper something into her ear, but she seemed to ignore him, leaning her head away in reproach. The grey woman touched her fingers to her throat.

“Sssso,” she hissed. “You would defy me, even now.”

Brienne looked up through the hair that had fallen into her face. “N-no. The Lady Catelyn I knew would have justice—this is not justice,” she pleaded.

“Justice fails,” creaked the woman.

Brienne took a hesitant step forward. Harwin pressed the dagger closer against Podrick’s skin, and the boy squirmed. She halted, her caged heart thumping against the vise that bound it.

“Sansa,” she said, of a sudden. She grasped onto the name as though it were hope itself. “I still search for Sansa—and Arya. I’ll find them. Your daughters could be alive now, in this moment, and I would bring them both home! My lady, I will! If you just stop—stop this madness—”

The one who held Hyle started. “Arya,” he said quietly, his voice rising almost as though in question.

His distraction was enough for Hyle to twist roughly and with his bound hands draw the smith’s hammer from his belt. He smashed the blunt of the hammer into his captor’s leg, driving a strangled cry of surprise from Gendry as he fell forward.

Brienne blinked.

It all had happened so quickly, after that. Gendry caught himself and ran, and as he abandoned them, Harwin pushed Podrick roughly to the ground, but Jaime and Hyle were soon upon him, and as they struggled, the Red Priest had turned and disappeared into the forest, leaving his lady undefended. Harwin died, cursing wetly, then was silent. The whole world seemed to still.

Brienne drew a step closer to Stoneheart, her sword arm held low as though to placate a wild animal. A rain had begun to fall. It splashed in fat, lazy droplets onto the crown of her head and dribbled down her brow to slide along the coarse slope of her nose.

The woman who had once been so proud and handsome pressed the gash at her throat closed. Slow, garbled speech rasped out from between her lips.

“I tested you…and this is how…you fulfill your oath.” Her mouth curved faintly with disdain. “A traitor.”

“Please, I cannot kill him,” she said miserably, her tears falling now as freely as the rain. Foolishly, she had hoped that if she brought Jaime to the Brotherhood Without Banners, she could convince them to let him go, let them all go—let her die in his place, even. Yet in her heart of hearts she had always known it could only end this way. She knew, from the moment the word left her lips and they cut her free, that by choosing the sword she had chosen blood. Blood for Harwin, Lem, Jack, and the rest. Blood for Lady Catelyn. In her desperation, she looked to Jaime, and she found him staring at her, frozen in place, his chest rising and falling. An image came back to her of Jaime in the baths, and how she had held the sad shape of his body. He had never been far from her since; he was always there, just behind her eyes. “Please,” she said once more, “Ser Jaime is not the man you thought.”

“I’ll not sufferrr another lie from your mouth,” rumbled the low crawl of Catelyn’s voice.

“It’s not a lie—” Brienne started, but the woman lifted her hand to still her.

“So you cannot kill a kingslayer,” she said. “And yet you’ve slain my people, killed any promise of revenge. Kill me then. Sssssend me back to the river. There is more peace there than could ever be found in this hell.”

“Lady Catelyn, I cannot,” Brienne cried. “You do not know the truth.”

Something close to a chuckle rattled out from between her lips.

“You would dare talk of truth? Nnno. You are false. A false knight, and falser friend.” The laughter died in the woman’s throat, a slow trickle of black blood parting from between her fingers. “By all means, do not falter now,” she said, her voice a slurry of ice. “Lady Catelyn is dead.”

Brienne stared in horror as the woman sank to her knees. Salt mixed in her mouth.

“Do it,” the ghost condemned. “ _Do it._ Set me free from this world. I don’t want to look upon you.”

Stoneheart shut her eyes.

Behind her, somewhere, Hyle was swearing and muttering, and she could feel Jaime’s stare upon her back. It burned her, ate like some caustic light into her soul.

As she lifted the sword, she thought, _Mother, forgive me, I am damned_ , and then, desperately, _Can you kill what is already dead?_

But Oathkeeper’s blade was sharp, and the ghost was a ghost, there and then gone.

Brienne shook herself from the memory. The rain that had persisted the last two days had slowed some at last, and their campfire glowed the brighter for it, though it gave little warmth and littler comfort. Jaime was still gone, and despite Hyle’s inexplicable confidence, Brienne still thought it more likely that he would not return at all. He could be on the kingsroad by now, riding hard for King’s Landing, her name and all memory of her already turned to ash.

It was what she deserved, though she wished he could have stayed to let her explain, to tell him that she had only tried to save them, that she had no choice but to lie… Yet he had not done her the courtesy of cursing her. _He didn’t even say goodbye_ , she thought, wiping the tears roughly from her face.

Going to kneel before Podrick, she felt his forehead with her palm. The whole of her hand fit over the boy’s brow with room still for her fingers to follow around the curve of his head. _So small_ , she thought. Pain lanced through her as real as any sword. If his fever did not break soon, she knew her squire would not live to the end of the week.

She looked up into the canopy of trees. Beyond them, the sky was darkening. A weak trail of smoke drifted up from their fire and disappeared beyond the silvery boughs.

Once, she had thought honor a simple thing, as simple as truth. But those were just words. Real living was choosing, was harder. Ser Jaime had tried to tell her that, perhaps.

The smoke rising off their little fire stung her eyes. Brienne moved closer to Hyle, sinking down next to him.

“Where did you find the boy? Surely no father gave him to you to squire.”

Brienne looked askance at Hunt.

“Calm now,” said Hyle in a weary voice. “I mean no offense. He’s not had the easiest go of it, being your squire. But there are worse men to be attached to at such an age.”

She sighed, remembering how Podrick had stalked after her on the road from Duskendale. It had been raining, and when she doubled round to surprise him, his rounsey had reared back and tossed him flapping and flying into the muck.

“He found me, in truth. Tailed me all the way from King’s Landing to Duskendale because he hoped he might find Lady Sansa. I thought it was Ser Shadrich, the Mad Mouse, dogging my heels. But it was only him. Just a friendless boy of ten or so, with a sty in one eye.”

_We were not so unalike, the boy and I. Both eager for purpose and for honor, and for the satisfaction of a master's favor._

Brienne reached forward and tossed a log back onto the fire. “He was the Hand’s squire, before. Lord Tyrion’s. Perhaps he thought that if he discovered his master’s wife, he would be returned to his service. And now he’s followed me across half of Westeros, and none of us have come any closer to finding the girl.”

“Why not let that road stop here? This seems its natural end.”

“How can I?”

Hyle smiled feebly. The firelight cast a shadow beneath the hook of his nose. “Forgive me, but your Lady Catelyn is doubly dead. Are you not released from your vow? We could make for Ashemark, I’ve heard the Marbrands are an agreeable people. Perhaps they have some work for two honest hedge knights such as us.”

“And leave Podrick to die?” she bit back.

Hunt’s smile shrunk away at that, and pity filled her; once, she would have delighted at the idea of Hyle inviting her to embark with him on a meandering journey to the westerlands, with no greater burden on their shoulders than the dream of the fanfare of tourney horns and a suggestion of romance. Yet that was a summer’s dream, fit for summer knights. Brienne’s thoughts went to the feast at Bitterbridge, where she had first made Catelyn’s acquaintance. _She was right, then. What fools we were. There are no songs for the likes of us._

“I’ve failed them…” Brienne said, softly, “I have. Renly. Ser Jaime. Lady Catelyn. And now Podrick. I’ll never find Arya, or Sansa. I’ve tried to honor them all, and still I’ve failed them, each one.”

The fire caught on a knot of wood and cracked loudly. Hyle said no more, stirring the logs with his stick.

As the clouds parted overhead and the moon climbed higher above the forest, Hyle and Brienne ate their catch wordlessly, passing the rabbit back and forth between them until only bones and tough gristle remained. They then settled down to sleep, both knowing perhaps that it would be wise to set a watch and take the night in turns, but despondency hung over them like a great tiredness, and neither volunteered the idea aloud, turning instead to the promise of darkness and quiet.

Sleep came fitfully to Brienne. For a long time she did not sleep at all but merely drifted in the waters of a nauseating torrent of remorse that seemed without end: She thought of Catelyn as she remembered her before, with her long rich plaits and the hard grace of her eyes, and she saw Stoneheart as well, floating away along the river of her childhood. In truth she, Hyle, and Jaime had burned her body, for the ground was already stiff with winter, and they had no shovel or pick to break it. But as she shut her eyes, Brienne could only imagine Stoneheart drifting amongst a river of other corpses, their flesh broken and grey and indistinct.

Thought of Catelyn took Brienne swiftly to the Stark girls; to young Arya who was perhaps already cold in the ground, and to Sansa, alone with her fate, walking through strange halls. She thought of Podrick appearing on the road from Duskendale, a cold shivering thing standing in the wet, crying that his master had left him, and she thought as well of their solemn journey through the Saltpans, and of carrion crows and the baying of wolves. She thought of Tarly as he dismissed her, of his plain disgust, and all the others who had jeered at her. She thought of Shadrich the Mad Mouse and his shrewd stare, and of Hyle’s laughing face, and Ronnet’s rose at her feet, the terrible griffins dancing on his cloak. She thought of the little orphan girl Willow and the horror of Biter on top of her, the weight of him pushing her down, down, deep into fever. And she thought of her father, the uncertain smile that would break on his face like the white crest of a wave, and Galladon, and the little marker above his grave. Of the night she set off for Renly’s camp, and the receding shores of her isle as it fell away across the water. Of shadow, of anguish, of Renly’s body lifeless in her arms. Of Catelyn’s voice from the inside of Jaime’s cell. Of Jaime, leaping down beside her into the pit, his hand offering her the hilt of a magic sword, his eyes, green and flashing, full of reproach. His nakedness. His name. The soft nag of his voice. And the pull of a noose around her neck, the single word breaking from her mouth: _Sword!_

On and on Brienne tossed through the currents of memory, until she heard the unmistakable sound of hooves striking soft earth. First she thought she dreamed, but as she opened her eyes, she saw the great, gentle shapes of animals moving in the darkness, their breath billowing out in clouds that hung in the cold night air.

A single hand lashed them to a tree beside their camp, and then its owner walked forward beneath the solemn pines. She shuddered with sudden cold.

_Jaime._

He crossed over to where Podrick lay, spreading something—a blanket of furs, she soon discerned in the darkness—out over him.

Brienne climbed stiffly from the bed of needles where she had been trying in vain to sleep. She knelt down beside Jaime, and he glanced at her before he drew out a vial and unstoppered it with his teeth.

He spat the cork out onto the ground. “Help me with this draught,” he said.

She propped the boy up. Podrick’s head fell back against her shoulder, his mouth opening and mumbling. Across the camp, in the smoldering glow of the coals, Hyle rose his to his elbows, watching.

Jaime tipped the draught to Pod’s mouth, and drained the bottle.

“There,” he said.

Brienne wiped at the corners of Pod’s mouth where the liquid had dribbled out. “What is it?” she said. “What is all this?”

Jaime rocked back on his heels and stood. She stared up at him, watching the thin outline of moonlight carve him from the darkness. Her eyes caught on the bare stub at the end of his arm. _He was wearing the gold hand before, when I fetched him from Pennytree. And in the wood, before he left this morning, he wore it still, but now…_

He lifted the arm and waggled it.

“It would seem gold still has some meaning,” he replied. He walked to the other side of the camp and dropped down into the soft bed of needles where she had been resting before.

Hesitantly, she followed, sitting as near to him as she dared. 

“The draught, the supplies, the horses…I meant,” she said, her voice thick and stumbling. “I thought perhaps you wouldn’t return here.”

“It took a long time to find a smallholding in these woods, and longer still to find a crofter willing enough to part with half his livelihood,” he explained. In the darkness, she saw his brow furrow and a look of softness come into his eyes. “Of course I was coming back.”

They stared at each other, unmoving. Brienne’s heart pounded in her throat.

His voice was abrupt in the silence.

“I am sorry, Brienne,” he said.

The words stunned her. She reached for a response, searching bleakly, while heat bloomed across her face, but he interrupted her thoughts with a touch of his hand; his fingers brushed along her ruined cheek, and the whole of her being lurched to a halt.

Brienne dared herself to look from where his hand lingered still against her face, up into his eyes.

_Oh_ , she thought of a sudden, _oh. I love him._

He lowered his hand, letting it fall forgotten into his lap. When she did not speak, he gave a shake of his head, the loose curls of his hair falling forward over his ears. Brienne had known him to be beautiful when he was half-starved and two paces from the Stranger’s door, and even in his plain road-weariness now, she trembled to be under his regard.

Jaime breathed out a beleaguered sigh.

“I heard reports of Beric Dondarrion, the nine-lived knight. It was him I sent my men to find and kill, not this Stoneheart, though her name too had come into my camp. I didn't give her any credence; you know how men talk.”

“Yes,” she said, struggling to follow his line of thought. “They say Dondarrion kissed her, and that the lord died as Catelyn…as she passed back into the world of the living.” Brienne looked down to her hands where they wrested the fabric of her shirt. _Why has he apologized,_ she wracked herself, _how can he ever forgive me?_ And, like a ram battering a gate, the thought rang through her again: _love him, I love him. It all has been because I love him._ Brienne swallowed hard. “I should have told you, but I thought, if I did, you might not have believed, or you might have turned back, and the boy—the boy and Ser Hyle—they would have killed them had I not brought you.”

“Do you distrust me so much?”

She looked up at that, and his pale eyes flashed in the darkness.

The words scalded her, left her tongue dumb and heavy in her mouth.

“I—”

“Better that you don’t answer,” he cut in, his voice low. “I’d loathe to hear it from your own lips.”

“No,” she said in desperation. Tears threatened again at the corners of her eyes. “Stoneheart was right. I am false. A false woman masquerading as a knight. If there is anyone I could not trust, it is myself. I led you to this.”

He swore beneath his breath, and she ducked her head.

“How can you say that, how can you—Brienne,” he said, his right arm jumping out, the bare end of his wrist jabbing roughly into her shoulder. “Look at me. Do not look away.”

She met his eyes, her breath coming in ragged drafts.

“You,” he gritted out, his good hand coming up to hold her other shoulder, “are a truer knight than most men I have had the displeasure to know in a lifetime, a truer woman and a truer friend. You were given a horrible choice, and yet you have lost no honor in my eyes.”

His words were without reproach, yet still her throat burned as though he had laid grave insult against her. Brienne shook her head forcefully, flinching away from his grip.

“No,” she said once more, the words spilling from her before she could stop them, “I chose what I did because despite my vow, I could not let them die. Because I grew to care for Podrick, even for Hyle, and that care eclipsed the oath I swore, eclipsed every oath, and now I’ve killed her, killed a woman I once served, a woman who in my friendlessness showed me kindness and trust, and put her faith in me to find her daughters and bring them home. I killed her because of love, because I _love_ —“

“Brienne, you did not kill her,” Jaime broke in suddenly.

She stared at him.  
  
“Whatever was there in her place could only have been a distant memory of Catelyn Stark,” he said. “She herself told the truth of it, Lady Catelyn was already dead. My dear father killed her long before you could.”

“But I am lost,” she protested.

“You are not.”

“Why have you really come,” she cried at last, boldly. “If not to sneer at me, or send me away on some other errand that I will only fail?”

His mouth twisted, and some vain part of her thought, _At last, anger._ But he did not yell or sneer or strike her; Jaime sat quietly, thinking, before he spoke.

“You held me, before, in the baths. Or have you forgotten?” An unsaid sadness moved behind his eyes. “Should I not hold you?”

At that, a sob broke loose from her chest. She bent forward uncontrollably, falling deeper into his arms until her forehead knocked into his shoulder.

It was a laughable image, no doubt, for she was no delicate thing; she was of his size if not larger, and in that moment she felt as she all too often did, like a girl confined in a giant’s body: hideous and awkward and wrong. But Jaime’s arms held tight around her, his wrist smoothing her back, his hand snaking up into her matted hair to sweep his fingers along and down the nape of her neck as though she were some much littler thing, deserving to be soothed and quieted and warmed. Brienne leaned into his touches, allowing the strange affections, half-praying they would not ever cease.

After a long moment, however, her sobs subsided, and his hand stilled at her neck. Hot with the embarrassment of their closeness, she pulled her face away from his chest. Jaime swept a thumb over the thin flesh beneath her eye.

“To say nothing of your competence, I should not have sent you alone to find the girl. I remained behind, and left my part of our oath untended," he said into the silence that stretched between them. "Is there a god of oaths? If there is, I seem to have offended her. Perhaps this,” he gestured abstractly with his hand, “is what my own choice has wrought.”

Sobered by his comment, she looked into his eyes, considering. Perhaps he was right, her journey might have been different had he accompanied her as she so often had caught herself wishing, but she knew as well as he that his place had been in King's Landing, not beside her on a meandering, hapless road that led no where at all. _He had no choice in it, no more than I_ , she thought, readying herself to tell him as much in reply, but she frowned as something else entirely occurred to her.

Her own eyes widened.

_Sansa. Shadrich. I was choosing wrong, all along._

“Ser,” she began unsteadily, then letting the honorific fall away, said, “Jaime. It’s true that I have failed to find Sansa or her sister.”

“Will you—”

“Wait, let me speak.” She concentrated suddenly with uncanny calm, thinking back upon her journey.

“I met my failure each way I looked,” she said. “First I had thought I would seek out the fool, Ser Dontos the Red of Duskendale, with whom Sansa was said to have fled the late king’s wedding. Yet at the whispering cliffs of Crackclaw Point I found the Bloody Mummers instead, and killed a different fool.” Shagwell’s horrible, broken face swam to mind, and she closed her eyes, bidding him gone only for the yellow-cloaked man called Lem to surface, sneering, in his place. Brienne took in a breath. “Then I searched the Saltpans for the Hound, and found him already dead, although another bore his helm and carried on his name. All death and life seemed confused thereafter.

“But there was another way, a third,” Brienne continued, “a path I had not taken.”

She gazed past Jaime across the fire to where Podrick lay sleeping. Jaime followed her stare.

_When Pod first came upon me on the road from Duskendale and begged to join me in my search for Sansa, it was not him I was expecting, but another._ She thought it had been Shadrich following her, looking to steal Sansa out form her protection should she discover her first. Yet she was wrong. It was plain that Shadrich knew her missive, for when she foolishly insisted to the man that she sought her sister and not the Stark girl, he had caught her easily in the lie. Still, though he had prompted her toward Dontos and Duskendale and expressed his own interest in finding Sansa, Shadrich had not followed her there. 

In her blind desperation to find the girl, she had not seen the Mad Mouse’s sleight. He had not followed her to Duskendale because he would not have needed to at all; he had gone the third way, the one she had not chosen. The way that led to the Vale.

In an act of boldness, Brienne reached out then and clasped Jaime’s wrist.

“If it can be somehow true that the mere sight of me does not fill you with disgust,” she said, “come with me. I know now where we'll find her. I'm certain of it.”

The canopy swayed with secret above them. Jaime looked into her eyes.

He laid his hand atop hers.

“My lady, it is my own luck I look on you at all,” he said in a tone of voice that seemed to drift somewhere above her, like the wind that touched through the branches of the trees. But a mischief came then into his eyes as he said, “True, you led me into what might have been a most untimely death, but let us not forget you saved me from that same danger.”

Brienne dared smile despite herself. The muscle of her cheek pulled painfully as she did.

Jaime got to his feet, crossing over to the horses where the saddlebags lay. From them he brought out a roll of shearling skins which he carried beneath one arm to drop unceremoniously to the forest floor, and he knelt down, spreading the two pelts out over the ground. Seeing one was intended for her, she moved onto it shyly; it was much too small for her, its length accommodating no more than her middle to the backs of knees, yet still it would keep the wet off, and she sank down into its wool with no small amount of gladness. 

But when Jaime lowered himself beside her and with a flick of his arm fanned his cloak out over them, and she jerked up in protest, the heavy fabric rolling down off her chest as she rose to her elbows.

"Ser," she began, her face hot.

"It's only a cloak, wench," he laughed. 

_And moments ago, I was 'my lady.'_ The name she knew was only meant in jest, and somehow it cheered her to hear him laugh, even if it was at her own expense. Abruptly, though, she recalled her dream, the one of Jaime wrapping his cloak around her shoulders, naming her a knight. _Someday, you shall have to tell him,_ she thought. _As you almost did tonight._

She stole a glance at him, watching the diffuse moonlight pool over Jaime's hair and brow, and bid the thoughts gone. _For now let me be only a fool._

"I have not had your answer," she made herself say, and she thanked the gods her voice came out steadier than she felt.

"Lie down, and you shall have it. You're letting out the warmth."

She sank down grudgingly, laying her head onto the cool earth, and he turned his face to hers, listening.

Brienne summoned her nerve.

"Will you come?"

"Yes," he said at last. Something like a smile crossed over his face. "I should have thought that obvious."

"Thank you," she breathed. 

Jaime rolled his head back to face the starless sky, and she did the same, staring up into the little pinpricks of velvet night that lay beyond the shifting canopy of trees above them. It was a most convincing peace. She could almost forget the bloodshed, and all the senseless death and horror of war and ghosts and her own hand; she could almost believe in a night that went on forever, and a dawning that could break anew and right the world. She could almost believe in the place she would hold at Jaime's side, in the strange purpose his company gave her. She could almost believe in herself. 

"We’ll begin on the morrow, as soon as the boy's fever has broken," Jaime was saying. "Perhaps we’ll make Catelyn Stark’s memory happier than we could Stoneheart.”

“No, not for memories, not for ghosts. Not anymore,” she said, her voice hushed. 

Though they lay apart beneath his cloak, Brienne burned still with the memory of his touch. Her heart kicked and turned, and she shut her eyes, sighing out a ragged breath. When daybreak came, they would set out together. Their road would be long, but they would find the girl, and they would protect her. She was sure this time. She knew the way.

“For Sansa,” Brienne said. “For what is right.”


End file.
